Under
the circumstances, I was more than a little leery of the mysterious
freight elevator shaft we'd found in the remains of a building off
of the Wabasha Bridge Room tunnels. I'm not afraid of heights. I
don't particularly like them, though, either.

When
Action Squad found an intact underground elevator shaft from a
demolished building, I knew that sooner or later I'd almost certainly
be getting a chance to find out exactly how much heights really
did or didn't bother me.

The location we'd discovered was the former subbasement of a former
building. When the R.E. Cobb Company Building had been torn down,
a pocket of the building's underground structure had somehow remained
uncollapsed beneath the rubble. This pocket consists of a good
sized-basement room filled with about 5 feet of smashed bricks,
rotten boards, and other demolition debris, and an intact, slanted
brick hallway leading from the room down to the top of a 60-foot
abandoned freight elevator shaft.

This
shot, taken around 1920, shows the now demolished Cobb Building.
There is a park on the site today.

.........

Danarchy,
who originally found the shaft with me, got vertigo whenever he
went within 5 feet of the edge. There was nothing to hold onto
if you wanted to lean out to look down, and anyone with even the
most rudimentary of imaginations could not help but envision how
easily a tiny accident could send someone hurdling to their death
far below.

Now,
sixty feet might not sound like much to you. To be honest, prior
to my experience getting into the Cobb Caves, I'd always underestimated
just how far down 50 feet or so is.

Believe
me; sixty feet is a lot when you're trying to descend that distance
down a smooth-walled concrete shaft far too wide to chimney down,
with sharp rocks and broken bricks littering the bottom, and which
would be almost impossible to get an injured or dead person out
of. It is highly intimidating, and I'd like to think we're not
an easily intimidated group of people. That's roughly a 5-story
drop. People simply are not designed to survive five story falls.

After
not looking down the shaft for awhile, it is easy to forget just
how frightening a drop it consists of. Your confidence builds,
and you can't remember what the heck was so bad about it. A quick
look down again with a light powerful enough to illuminate the
bottom is a quick cure for this arrogance.

shit

Hmm.
I got ahead of myself a bit there. Allow me step back for a minute
and give some quick background. By the time we had found this unique
underground feature, we were wrapping up our exploration of the
Saint Paul Utility Tunnel Labyrinth.

Finally, it seemed that we would be able to say "well, I think we've
seen everything down here" without discovering a whole new tunnel
system the next time we went. (This had happened several times,
and was becoming a running gag.)

shit

So,
the elevator shaft represented the last major unknown in the Labyrinth.
Action Squad had explored, mapped, and pretty much owned the entire
rest of the system; the question of where this mysterious freight
elevator shaft might lead was an irritatingly and insanely intriguing
issue.

Intensifying
our desire to find a way down the shaft was the intel we had gathered
which indicated that there had once been a system of storage caves
in the general vicinity, known as the Cobb Caves. By our reckoning,
these caves would have to be just about where this elevator shaft
was. Had it been used to get goods into and out of the caves at
one point? If not, could we find or make a connection to the caves
from wherever the shaft did lead us?

Keep
in mind that at the time, we did not know what building's remains
we had found: we didn't even know that there had once been a building
called the Cobb Building. All we knew was that there were supposed
to have once been some caves in the area known as the Cobb Caves.
At best, the elevator shaft would lead to this mysterious cave
system; at worst, it would be a dead end at the bottom (a distinct
possibility, as we could see that the bottom was piled with rubble).
Perhaps it lead only to a single tunnel leading out to the base
of the bluff. We had no idea … but there was no way in hell we
were going to not find out one way or another.

But
…

How?
We're not trained in rope climbing techniques, and the shaft had
no hand or footholds, and was far too wide to chimney.

shit

Our
first serious effort was in the form of a Slim Jim special: a
shitty nylon rope and PVC pipe rope ladder. We'd used them in
the past to get into all kinds of places … but never more than
20 feet or so. We hauled the massive rolled up 60 foot ladder
in two parts, through several tunnel systems, and got it assembled
over the course of a couple of hours. I took one look down the
shaft, and said, "no way." But Slim Jim was determined not to
be turned away from our planned descent.

He
tied his flimsy-looking creation to a pipe about 10 or 15 feet
from the shaft, around a few rough brick corners, and tossed it
over the side. It appeared to be a few feet from the ground. It
also appeared insanely suicidal to think about going down it.

The
way Slim Jim designs his ladders, the rope is bent at 90 degree
angles against the sharp edge of each PVC pipe rung, and the ropes
would give a real climber fits … simple knots made of all acute
angles. Just looking at the flimsy thing twisting down the shaft
out of sight into the darkness was enough to make a sane man shudder.

Knowing
how the breaking point of a rope is reached much more quickly
when the rope is subjected to the stresses of tight angled bends,
and that the longer a rope is, the more easily it will snap (think
of how easy it is to break 4 feet of string, versus 2 inches of
string), I was uncharacteristically discouraging. I was not eager
to have to change the part in the "general info" part of the website,
where I mention that "so far, none of us has died." Getting the
police in to get his corpse out would be a real pain in the ass,
too. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I suppose I'd be sad if Crazy Slim
Jim Hollison bought the farm. Heh.

Danarchy
and Morning Star were not very into the plan, either, and it Jim's
effort at making us feel better didn't help us much. Totally serious,
he said, "If I do die, don't feel like it's your fault or anything.
It's totally my decision." Then he more or less told us to tell
his parents not to blame us if he wound up at the bottom of the
shaft with a broken neck and a broken rope ladder in his dead
hands.

I
insisted on tying a rope we'd found in the tunnel to a rusty ringbolt
in the floor and clipped the other end to the back of Jim's belt,
as a back-up in case the ladder broke on the first 20 feet of
the downward trip.

However,
the clip was corroded and stiff, making it unlikely he'd be able
to safely disengage himself when he hit the end of the pathetic
back up rope.

Now,
I wanted to get down that shaft as badly as anyone did. In fact,
I was absolutely confident that we would do so. But some vestigial
modicum of good sense told me that it should not be tonight, and
that we shouldn't use the deathtrap rope ladder. Fortunately,
Slim Jim lost a good deal of his suicidal resolve when he actually
put some weight on the first rung of the ladder. Sensing my opportunity,
I struck. "Jim," I said, hefting a rock the size of a large watermelon,
"this could be you."

I
swung the stone out over the edge of the shaft and released it.

Silence.

BOOM!!!

The
crash echoed satisfyingly, and from the look on Slim Jim's face,
I knew I'd made my point. Vowing to return and conquer the shaft,
we packed up the rope ladder and took the long, convoluted route
back to the surface.